Managed Code

Definition - What does Managed Code mean?

Managed code is a scheme applied by Microsoft to some high-level programming languages in order to have their execution managed by the .Net Framework Common Language Runtime.

The core of this is a contract of cooperation between the runtime and the natively executing code which states that the runtime may stop an executing CPU in order for it to retrieve the information which is specific to that current address the CPU is executing. This is to ensure type safety, array bound and index checking, garbage collection and exception handling.

Techopedia explains Managed Code

Managed code refers to code that has been written using any one of the high-level programming languages supported for use with the Microsoft .Net Framework. All of these languages share a unified set of class libraries which can then be encoded into an Intermediate Language (IL). A run-time aware compiler is used to compile the intermediate language into a native executable code which can be run within the managed execution environment. This will ensure that there will always be proper array bound and index checking, as well as proper garbage collection and error handling.

Many typical programming mistakes can be avoided using managed code through compiling in the managed execution environment. Small and tedious tasks such as safety checks, destruction of unused objects and memory management are already done automatically.